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The United Nation emerged as an international
regime of governance to maintain world order in
the post war period and coordinate international
cooperation in the following areas:
• Security
• Economic
• Political
• Cultural
UNO System
• General Assembly
• Security Council
• Economic and Social Council
• International Court of justice
• Trusteeship Council
• UNO System Agencies
Some UNO Agencies
• UNCTAD - UN Conference on Trade and Development
• UNEP - UN Environmental Program
• UN-Habitat - UN Human Settlement program
• UNHCR - UN High Commission for Refugees
• UNDP - UN Development Program
• UNIFEM - UN Development Fund for Women
• UNICEF - UN Children’s Fund
• UNFPA - UN Population Fund
• WFP - World Food Program
• UNRWA - UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian
Refugees
The Bretton Woods System (BWS)
• Αstable exchange rates
• A reserve asset (something like the gold
standard)
• Control international capital flows
• Availability of shortterm loans to deal with
temporary balance of payments difficulties
• Rules to open up trade.
Mandate of the World Bank
(IBRD)
The stated objectives of the World Bank
(International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development) were:
– to assist in the reconstruction of the global
infrastructure destroyed by the war,
– to facilitate the development of the emerging, newly
independent, underdeveloped countries – (an objective
that at the time was secondary to the first one in
priority).
Mandate of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF)
The stated objectives of the IMF were:
• to promote and maintain high levels of
employment and income through the
expansion of international trade
• the maintenance of exchange rate stability
and currency convertibility
Mandates of World Bank and
IMF
• A key unstated mandate for both institutions
was the integration of countries into the
capitalist world economy.
3) In addition to doing what GATT did, provide
a forum for negotiations and handling trade
disputes, the WTO is new in many ways.
World Trade Organization
• The WTO is the most important regulator of trade at
international level today and also sets the terms within
which regional trade agreements can be signed.
• The impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
established in 1995, had gone largely unnoticed until
Seattle 1999.
• Trade is an important aspect of the current wave of
globalization and its influence is felt from the global level
to peoples' daily lives.
• According to the proponents of the WTO, globalization
needs to be managed at world level from a trade
perspective.
World Trade Organization
• The WTO covers all areas of trade, not just manufactured
goods, but services and intellectual property as well.
• Whereas the GATT was virtually toothless when it came to
enforcement powers, a first objective of the WTO is
administering WTO trade agreements and monitoring
national trade policies.
• What this means is that an organization like the WTO
which is not internally democratic, is able to override or
change democratically approved national trading laws
World Trade Organization
• The result of trade negotiations in services (General Agreement on
Trades in Services (GATS) has been to put pressure on governments
to privatize what have historically been public services such as the
delivery of water. In many countries in the Third World, the World
Bank has made the privatization of water delivery a condition of its
continued financial support for the government.
• The result of trade negotiations on intellectual property (TradeRelated
Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) have led to billions of dollars
of monopoly profits being transferred worldwide from poor countries
to rich countries under the guise of protecting the property rights of
inventors and developers. E.G. HIV/AIDS Drugs
World Trade Organization
• In 1997, the WTO reported that world trade in goods reached $ 5.3
trillion, and trade in services an additional $ 1.3 trillion.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
figures indicate that:
• more than two thirds of world trade involves at least one multinational,
much of it within the same multinational around the world (intrafirm
exports)
• with an estimated $7 trillion in global sales in 1995 the value of
goods and services produced by some 280,000 affiliates of the world's
44,508 TNCs international production outweighs exports as the
dominant mode of servicing foreign markets
• TNCs were responsible for the $ 350 billion in foreign direct
investment in 1995.
The problem with the distribution
of trade benefits
• The WTO's basic assumption is that its rules
contribute to trade and investment liberalization
which leads to more competition, better allocation
of resources, economic growth, more employment
and better living standards, including
environmental conservation.
• Although the WTO, and GATT in the past, have
incorporated special measures for weaker
economies, there are many pitfalls in the current
system
Unequal distribution of the
benefits of trade
• Inequalities between skilled and unskilled workers are
growing in the North as well as in the South;
• Corporate restructuring, labour shedding and wage
repression are on the rise;
• Profit shares and the return on capital has risen much more
(from 12.5% in the early 1980s to 16% in the mid 1990s in
G7 countries ) than wages;
• The concentration of revenues and higher company profits
have not been invested so as to create more jobs;
• The benefits of liberalization have been mainly reaped by
traders rather than by farmers who have not received
Life and Debt
• According to the film Life and Debt, in
what way has the intervention of the World
Bank and the IMF facilitated the process of
globalization?
• Prepare not more than a one page response
to the above question.